Kelps

While walking along the beach of Santa Cruz and Carmel during my trip to California, I encounter lots of kelps lying all over the beach. At that time I didn't know what it was until I was on the plane and started to think about this extraordinary looking plant. It has a bulb filled with stuff and I was wondering what it was at that time because you could burst it but no liquid comes out.

So I search for it on Entrez Pubmed and I found tons of stuff about this algae. The bulb is actually filled with gases that allow the plant to grow upwards and float at the surface of the oceon to obtain sufficient light for photosynthesis. What is more interesting, the major gas found within the bulb is carbon monoxide!! There are life form that can tolerate such high concentration of carbon monoxide! Isn't that interesting?

The current focus on kelp is the engineering of kelp into a marine bioreactor. In early 1990s, there are lots of researchers who pursue the capability of converting kelp biomass into fuel using bacteria such as methanogens that are capable of assimilating carbon monoxide and converting it to methane gas. I wonder what happen to these studies..couldn't find anything that is more recent than 1995. But isn't it cool that an algae can provide an alternative to the current fuel shortage that we're facing today?

Besides being an interesting subject to study, kelp is also used for food - natural salt in bonito shavings, a substitute of spirulina, alginate from kelp is used as a stabilizer in ice-cream and guess what.. Gaia Research, a South African company which provides probiotics for one of the labs here at MSU, is also looking into using kelp as an adjuvant to promote maintenance of intestinal flora.